Doom 4 is just called Doom, runs on id Tech 6

18 Jul 2014 by Peter Parrish

Pretty sure you’ll be able to talk this monster into submission.

QuakeCon is an event that’s happening right now over in Dallas, and a place where the fourth Doom game was just shown. Don’t ever call it Doom 4, it’s just Doom now. Yes, I know that the first Doom is already called Doom, but … look modern videogame naming conventions are weird and unhelpful, let’s just leave it at that.

Now, this presentation was only shown at QuakeCon and I’m not at the event, so all of the following information is exciting second-hand detail that has oozed out of the show. There won’t be any accompanying video, because Bethesda probably made sure everybody handed over their phones and secret recording devices. Whatever video was shown may be released at a later date, of course.

So. Doom. It’s called that because it’s intended to be an origin story (I’m pretty sure the origin of Doom was just Tom Hall, John Carmack and John Romero messing about with computers, but whatever.) By most accounts coming out of Texas it’s very, very gory. Like, “tear some poor guy’s hand off and use it as a keycard” gory.

The game will run on id Tech 6, the first title to use that engine. 1080p/60fps has been mentioned, presumably to reassure the console people because of course a modern day Doom will be capable of running at higher resolutions and frame-rates on top-end PCs. Um, unless it’s another Rage/Wolfenstein situation in which case people with AMD cards might want to wait a short while before buying it. id Tech hasn’t tended to play well with those on launch.

As you’d hope, the game will supposedly be all about running and gunning at high speeds. Without any video there’s no way to really confirm that yet, but it’s good to hear that’s the intention and nobody tweeting out of the event has said “that’s total balls it was slow as heck” so that’s a positive sign. Enemies are said to drop health pick-ups (which hopefully means no regenerating health.) A chainsaw has been sighted.

They’ll be more from the game “next year” according to this Bethesda news snippet.